1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to telecommunications services. More particularly, the present invention relates to capabilities that enhance substantially the value and usefulness of various messaging paradigms including, inter alia, Short Message Service (SMS), Multimedia Message Service (MMS), Internet Protocol (IP) Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), etc.
2. Background of the Invention
As the ‘wireless revolution’ continues to march forward the importance to a Mobile Subscriber (MS)—for example a user of a Wireless Device (WD) such as a mobile telephone, a BlackBerry, a computer, etc. that is serviced in some way by a Wireless Carrier (WC)—of their WD grows substantially.
One consequence of the growing importance of WDs is the resulting ubiquitous nature of WDs—i.e., MSs carry them at almost all times and use them for an ever-increasing range of activities.
Over the past many years various factors (including the ubiquitous nature of WDs) have driven a steady annual increase, year over year, in the number of SMS, MMS, etc. messages that have been exchanged by and between WDs. That steady increase shows no sign of abating. For example, as reported by the industry group CTIA (see ctia.org on the World Wide Web) in the U.S. there were over 363 billion SMS messages sent during 2007 (up from 158 billion SMS messages sent during 2006) and there were over 2.7 billion MMS messages sent during 2006 (representing a 100% increase over 2005).
As the volume of SMS, MMS, etc. messaging has increased in the past, and at present continues to increase, it has become more and more important for all of the different entities that process messages—e.g., WCs, intermediaries, enterprises, Content Providers (CPs), Service Providers (SPs), etc.—to route messages in the most efficient, expeditious, flexible, etc. manner possible.
A message may contain among other things a destination address—i.e., the address to where the message should be delivered—e.g., for a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) SMS message perhaps the Telephone Number (TN) of the recipient MS' WD; for an Application-to-Peer (A2P) SMS message perhaps a Short Code (SC) that is associated with a particular service (such as for example an advertising campaign); etc.
The routing of a message may involve a number of operations including possibly inter alia the resolution of the message's destination address—i.e., the authoritative identification of the entity (e.g., WC, landline carrier, etc.) that, at the moment that the message is being routed, services or that is otherwise associated with the address.
In the past the resolution of a message's address may have entailed multiple (possibly inter alia expensive, time-consuming, etc.) lookup operations against one or more internal and/or external data repositories. Worldwide the introduction of Mobile Number Portability (MNP) regimes, Number Resource Optimization (NRO) programs such as TN pooling, etc. complicated significantly the operation, administration, etc. of such lookup operations. Additionally, in high message traffic environments the resolution of a message's address may have employed specialized (e.g., large data set, high volume, etc.) facilities such as for example IBM's Transaction Processing Facility (TPF).
The challenges that were described above highlight the need for a more generalized infrastructure that offers, possibly among other things, enhanced address resolution capabilities.
The present invention provides such an infrastructure and addresses various of the (not insubstantial) challenges that are associated with same